Band of Rebels Rally at JPMorgan Chase Bank: Demand that the City of Rochester Divest from Chase!

Band of Rebels Rally at JPMorgan Chase Bank: Demand that the City of Rochester Divest from Chase!

What: Join us to help push the city to stop banking at Chase!Where: JPMorgan Chase Bank, 520 Portland Ave. (near the corner of Clifford Ave.), RochesterWhen: Monday, September 24, 12 -1 PMWhy: Chase is still at it and the Dodd-Frank banking reform is being gutted.
As many US municipalities face bankruptcy due to the interest rate swaps they signed with the big banks, cities like Detroit are paying hundreds of millions to Chase (the third largest muni-bond underwriter) to get out of these swap agreements, forcing the city to fire more than a thousand city workers.[1]
Just today, Matt Taibbi reports on a House bill that has just passed, HR 2827, which rolls back a portion of Dodd-Frank designed to protect cities and towns from the next Jefferson County disaster. He writes: “Jefferson County, Alabama was the most famous case – the city of Birmingham went bankrupt after being bribed and goaded into taking on billions of dollars of toxic swap deals – but in fact it was just one of hundreds of similar examples of localities being duped into suicidal financial deals by rapacious banks and financial companies. The Denver school system, for instance, got clobbered when it opted for an exotic swap deal pushed by J.P. Morgan Chase (the same villain in Jefferson County, incidentally) and then-school superintendent/future U.S. Senator Michael Bennet, that ended up costing the school system tens of millions of dollars. As was the case in Jefferson County, the only way out of the deal involved a massive termination fee that might have been even more destructive than the deal itself.
To deal with this problem, the Dodd-Frank Act among other things included a simple reform. It required the financial advisors of municipalities to do two things: register with the SEC, and accept a fiduciary duty to respect the best interests of the taxpayers they are advising . . .But Wall Street couldn’t have that . . . The idea was a veritable axe-blow to the banks’ municipal advisory businesses.
So what did Wall Street lobbyists and trade groups like SIFMA (the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association) do? Well, they did what they’ve been doing to Dodd-Frank generally: they Swiss-cheesed the law with a string of exemptions. The industry proposal that ended up being HR 2827 created several new loopholes for purveyors of swaps and other such financial products to cities and towns.”[2]

Basically, the banks that ripped off American towns and cities are going to be allowed to continue what they were doing.
Had enough? Change comes because you make it! Join us!